essay Archive
26 Oct 2016
Gang of Four: The Gang’s Still Here
Rising out of the tail-end of the late 1970s Great Britain music scene (thus earning the “postpunk” label), Gang of Four combined dub reggae and punk, with funk undercurrents. The […]
17 Oct 2016
An Artist to Watch: Allen Stone
Look at photos of Allen Stone and read his bio, and neither will prepare you for his sound. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest in a sheltered, religious-based atmosphere, Stone […]
01 Apr 2016
An Instructive Little Anecdote
Today I’d like to share a brief, second-hand story. It’s one that, I think, illustrates the perils of narrow-mindedness, of holding onto preconceived notions, of dismissing that which one doesn’t […]
15 Feb 2016
A Look Back at “Now Wave Sampler” (1979)
I’m not ashamed of my age: for most of 1979 I was fifteen years old. Living in the suburbs of Atlanta – even then very much a “car city” – […]
12 Oct 2015
AmericanaFest Panel: Breaking Barriers Through #SocialNetworking
I recently had the pleasure and honor of joining a distinguished panel to discuss social networking as it applies as a tool for musicians. In addition to my years as […]
29 Sep 2015
Let’s Play “Smash or Trash,” Part Two
Continued from Part One… My first impression: humorless concept-world-prog. But humor is generally in short supply in progressive rock circles, and I like prog. So I shouldn’t hold that against […]
28 Sep 2015
Let’s Play “Smash or Trash,” Part One
One of the exercises in which I regularly engage is a little thing I like to call “Smash or Trash.” The name is stolen from a segment the radio deejays […]
28 Aug 2015
A Brief History of Rock’n’roll…Because, Why Not?
My cousin is a fifth-grade public school teacher. Put another way, he’s doing some of the most important work there is. Recently he asked me to put together “a page […]
14 Jul 2015
Some Long-lost Artist Biographies
Way back in the depths of the Great Recession (2007-2009), one of my former writers (from my time as Editor in Chief of a now-defunct magazine I won’t dignify by […]
10 Apr 2015
Old Dog, New Trick
As a kid, like so many of my generation, I harbored dreams of becoming a rock star. And failing that, I wanted at least to become a musician. But for […]